An Uncomfortable Meeting
by Karma Rue Lovegood Everdeen
Summary: You'd think you'd get a break to eat dinner in peace after you have just saved the entire world from an alien invasion. But Toni can't get off her phone as she deals with press and politicians a like and was now really the time for her friend Rhodey to show up. Prequel to There's Always A Catch. Winner of poll for 450th oneshot.


An Uncomfortable Meeting

**A/n – The result of the poll for the 450****th**** review oneshot was that the Avengers should be shown meeting Rhodey for the first time. So here it is!**

Toni was taking calls all the way through the shawarma dinner that she had suggested the Avengers go for after their battle against Loki. The others caught snippets of her conversations and some were amazed by how good of a job she was doing of manipulating the press and influential government figures into doing what she wanted them to. One particularly eventful conversation ended with the phrase, "well I would turn up the press conference if I were you. Who knows what I might share in your absence. Oh so you're coming after all! Wonderful, I will see you there."

"Did you just blackmail a senator?" Steve said not quite sure whether he should be appalled by this or not. After all from Toni's side of the conversation he had gotten the impression that he was trying to get the Avengers locked up or put down for saving the world because they'd had to let the city take some damage to do it.

"The guy's a real slime ball so I have a lot on him," Toni said with a shrug, "Nothing illegal but I could still get him fired in an instant but if I do then I lose a lot of ability to do damage control."

"Keep people like that where you can see them," Natasha said nodding as a different ringtone sounded from Toni's bag.

"Why has the noise your communication device makes changed Friend Stark?" Thor asked in his rather old fashioned way.

"It's my personal cell," Toni told him, "and since Piper already called me…" here she paused for a minute to receive the cell from god knows where in her tight fitting leather outfit and answering it, "hello Rhodey!"

Natasha's eyes sparked with recognition and Clint gave her a questioning look not knowing why she would recognise the name when he hadn't seen it in any section of Toni's file. Natasha had been responsible for writing most of it after all including a slamming review of Toni that seemed to completely contrast with the way the pair interacted. They had nicknames for each other for god's sakes!

Following that moment the Avengers were subjected to a single side of a conversation that occasionally didn't make any sense to them at all, "obviously I'm not dead… I figured I should call the guy who told me if I didn't call him he'd find a way to kick my ass first… well I didn't exactly have the time to call you afterwards… you didn't have to drive to New York… seriously, I'm fine… I mean it… no it's not like the factory incident again I really am fine… you don't have to meet up with me right away… no, he's going back to DC because he believed me when I said _I was fine…! _Fine!" After this she rattled off the address of the shawarma joint and sat back down at the table retrieving her business phone and fielding another call from a journalist by telling him about the press conference.

"You do know SHIELD has Agents assigned to publicity right?" Clint said hesitantly in between phone calls.

"Well yes but no offence meant I don't trust them one bit," Toni told him, "besides I had my first press conference at the age of four. I'm much more prepared for this than they are. Hello Toni Stark! Give me a minute."

She pulled her phone away from her ear and told them, "this one will probably get very loud so I'm going to see if I can take this elsewhere," she instantly switched over to Arabic and addressed the owners of the store, _"_do you have a back room I could use?"

One of the owners nodded and led her through a staff only door for her to take the call and the others turned to the awkward silence that had been constantly in the room before Toni's phones had begun ringing non-stop. The silence remained - aside from a few audible shouts from Toni – until a man in military uniform entered the restaurant asking them, "Where's Toni?"

"She's in the back room on the phone," Natasha spoke up deciding it might as well be her considering the fact that she was already acquainted with Rhodey. Even if that acquaintanceship wasn't based on the most stable ground.

"Natal-" Rhodey started before catching himself, "Natasha. I didn't expect to see you here."

"Well, I didn't expect to see you still hanging around Toni either so I guess we both struck lucky," Natasha told him trying not to sound too bitter. Rhodey may have messed with her friend but so had she and if she had the right to be forgiven then so did Rhodey.

"I'm sorry who are you?" Steve interjected before a fight could break out.

"Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes," Rhodey told him, "US military. I'm also known Toni since she was fifteen which makes me her best friend."

"Not necessarily," Natasha muttered but she was careful not to let Rhodey hear her as she didn't particularly want a fight to break out in the shawarma joint. Especially when Toni was only a brief distance away and would likely berate both of them for entering into a conversation about who was a better friend to her.

Steve however sat back shocked that Toni had a friend who was in the armed forces after all she had said about not being a soldier. Mind you if he had known Toni for that long he probably hadn't been military when they had first met. And Toni used to be a weapons developer for the army so it was possible that she hadn't always hated the army.

"Really," Bruce said obviously as shocked as Steve that Toni considered someone in the military a friend, "how did you two become friends?" Maybe he was being a little invasive but he was very curious about how someone had managed to be Toni's friend for so long. Not because he thought Toni couldn't have friends but more for the fact that he thought that Toni seemed to purposefully alienate people at times to try and get them to stay away. Bruce recognised the tactic having used it himself at times.

"I was the only person at MIT would talk to the fifteen year old who had turned up and was smarter than the seniors," Rhodey said shrugging knowing that if he hadn't been the only person willing to talk to her Toni would not be part of his life at all by this point.

"I never knew she was that young when she went to college," Clint said shocked. It seemed there was always something new to learn about Toni. He wondered if there was a lot more that he still had to discover about his new acquaintance. Mind you basically all he knew so far was that Toni was very intelligent, apparently Natasha liked her despite the negative report that Nat had written about her and she had a similar sense of humour to him. That wasn't a lot to work with.

"I'm not ashamed of saying that Toni is a million times smarter than I am," Rhodey said matter-of-factly. Especially because I think every other person on the planet can say the exact same thing apart from a select few who are lucky enough to be closer than that."

This lead to a lengthy discussion about Toni as a person with a lot of glaring at Rhodey from Natasha at certain points at which point Rhodey would decide that he wouldn't be telling the others that factor in Toni's life. In fact this happened so often in the conversation that in the end Rhodey was restricted to witty anecdotes about Toni's time in college with him.

About twenty minutes into this conversation (during which surprisingly Toni had still not reappeared) Steve made the mistake of referencing something that he had said to Toni on the helicarrier. He only made mention of his comment to mention that he now regretted it but Rhodey simply latched onto the comment he had made and began berating him for it.

Unfortunately knowing that Toni would kill him for referencing her encounter with Obadiah Stane or Ivan Vanko or his transgressions which coincided with those of Natasha whom he couldn't confront about her eyeing him as if he was about to betray Toni again. So his grand argument was restricted to how bad it was to judge on first impressions especially when you were judging someone based on your personal view of someone else.

He soon learned that he should never raise his voice when talking about something Toni wouldn't approve of when she was just next door. He really should have learned things like that by now having known Toni for so many years but it was often hard to tell what would offend Toni or not because she changed her mind about that herself every other day. Today was not Rhodey's lucky day especially with the wound of his betrayal still being relatively fresh.

Toni overheard his rant directed at Steve and knew that he was being a complete hypocrite so she ended her current call as quickly as possible before putting her phone on silent so she wouldn't hear the next ones and walking out into the main restaurant area. "James," she said, "shut up!"

Knowing the minute that Toni used his first name that he was in big trouble he decided to settle for his usual retort and say, "Okay, Antoinette!"

"You really don't want to go there right now," Toni said dangerously and he immediately decided that he had made an error in judgement. Toni was angry enough at him that their old joke of using Toni's full name to calm down the argument wasn't working. In fact it probably wasn't a good idea to mention it in front of so many other people. She really hated her first name for a reason that not even she had been able to articulate to him. Admittedly it was a bit old fashioned like his own but he didn't see any reason to hate it so much.

The room fell almost completely silent after Toni's outburst aside from Clint's chuckles about Toni's full name which were quickly quenched by a fiery glare from the woman herself. Steve was the most confused about this turn of events for he knew he deserved what Rhodey had been telling him. He had been completely wrong about everything to do with Toni Stark and here she was shocking him again by not letting her best friend tell him off for it. Mind you the woman was a mystery within a million more mysteries and he doubted anybody actually knew her but herself.

Eventually the silence became too awkward even for Toni's taste and she decided to break it, "Fine, Rhodey we will talk about this in private later where I will go into detail about things I won't stay here and Steve you have already been forgiven so stop stressing about that and just start talking already."

That managed to break the air of tension in the room and one by one the group began to strike up conversation topics. Steve was planning on talking to Toni but she waved him off and fished her phone back out and answered it, "hello! Of course it's me this is my phone! Why are you calling if you already know about the press conference may I ask? No Miss Everheart I will not give you an exclusive on the behalf of your inappropriate behaviour, constant use of libel and the fact that now I've remembered about the libel you and your paper are officially about to be sued. Be sure to take a seat at the back of the room. Goodbye!" After that interesting conversation she wandered back into the back room answering another phone call and Steve was left with only Rhodey to talk to. He didn't think the moment could be any more awkward until the restaurant owner came up to them and asked them in broken English if they were having relationship troubles.

**A/n: Couldn't resist ending it there. Made it an add on to the shawarma scene because I wanted to. Literally the only reason.**


End file.
